The juvenile durable consumer product industry is a several billion dollar business segment globally per annum. Within this segment there are various products that provide wheeled mobility for a child occupant, including strollers, bicycle trailer carriages, and wagons.
The stroller (pram, child carrier) is a hand-pushed juvenile mobility device used to carry and transport babies and young infants. There are discrete categories of strollers based on the age of the child occupant and the usage profile: Standard strollers, also called full-size or regular strollers, are usually designed to accommodate babies (0-6 months) lying in the supine position; later (6-36 months) transitioning to upright seated accommodation. Jogging strollers are designed to provide a smooth, stable ride for the occupant and ease of maneuverability and ergonomics for the user at running speeds. Travel systems include a companionable infant car seat and a standard stroller in a single system. Once the child has outgrown the infant car seat, the standard stroller can be used by itself. Lightweight strollers or umbrella strollers are upright seated strollers that can be folded compactly. Their light weight and portability make them user friendly for public transport and maneuvering in crowed areas. Multi-child strollers have a flexible structural design that allow the accommodation of two occupants or more.
Bicycle trailer carriages are motorless wheeled frame devices with a hitch system for transporting child occupants, and are constructed to enhance the comfort and safety of one or more occupants. Trailers usually have a low center of gravity to increase stability when cornering. Single-wheel: a single-wheel design typically has a single rear-mounted wheel. Though of limited towing capacity, this design tends to be more stable than trailers with two or more wheels when moving. The single wheel can tilt from side to side when cornering, as does the bicycle itself, allowing for coordinated turns at relatively high speed. Two-wheel: a two-wheel design provides much greater occupant carrying capacity and a wider occupant bed. Though not suitable for high speed, they are ideal for everyday cycling; very much like towing a trailer behind a car. Two-wheel trailers tend to be as wide or wider than the handlebars of the bicycle, therefore care needs to be taken when riding through narrow spaces.
A Child Wagon is a toy wagon that has the same architecture as the traditional, larger weight capacity utility wagon, but is much smaller and has an open top. An average wagon is able to seat one child, and is generally propelled by human power through a handle at the front.
The aforementioned juvenile mobility devices offer specific and limited functions. In most cases, juvenile mobility devices are manufactured with rolling chassis that are specifically designed for a given function or purpose. In addition, when an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) creates a product that attempts to provide multi-function (i.e. bicycle trailer carriage that converts to a stroller) the chassis architecture limitations lead to compromised performance. Consequently, consumers either purchase an individual device for each specific purpose, that includes a new rolling chassis or accept significant performance degradation when a plurality of functions are combined in a single product.
This lack of consumer options to purchase an optimized structural architecture offering versatility and non-compromised performance for multiple utility leads to: an increased carbon footprint and use of raw materials and resources, high opportunity cost through new purchase depreciation across the multiple bespoke products purchased, and a non-efficient use of homebase storage space and portability when transporting multiple devices.
Thus, a multi-function stroller device that is readily configurable to a user and juvenile occupant's changing needs is desired that provides non-compromised performance for each usage function.